


From Tears and Sadness Free

by Syksy



Category: Crimson Peak (2015)
Genre: F/M, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-17
Updated: 2016-12-17
Packaged: 2018-09-09 05:38:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8878030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Syksy/pseuds/Syksy
Summary: Lucille has loved only one thing, one idea, one person all her life.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Galadriel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Galadriel/gifts).



> Thank you to Rabidsamfan for the beta!

The woman is sobbing quietly in her room. The sound is at the same time eerie and right, like the house wants there to be crying and sorrow inside its walls. It will come to an end soon enough, Lucille knows the signs by now. The languorous weakness, the disorientation. Blood on the bed sheets that she washes like the doting sister-in-law she likes to appear. No sense in making them hate her, if it can be avoided. She certainly does not hate them. They matter far too little for that.

It was hard at first, of course it was. Seeing him kiss the hand of another woman, murmur softly in her ear, give her that adoring look of his, all vulnerability and hope. But it had been her notion, this whole scheme. She had sat up one night, unable to sleep, with the walls around her feeling like those of a prison, inescapable, ancient and malevolent. She could hear them breathe, anxious to swallow up the last of her. That she could stomach, and it might even be fair, all things considered. But it would happen to Thomas too. So she came up with the plan.

Thomas had hated the idea. He still does. He goes on and on every night in her arms about how hard it is to touch another, to bear their fingers or their lips on his cheek and not flinch away. But he does it, because he does undestand that it is the only way forward. Lucille would play the role gladly, if she only could, but they both know that would never work. They need to bring their target home, need to have them vulnerable in a way that men never are.

She feels a strange kind of pity for them. These colourless, insipid creatures, without substance or self, so ready to believe that love really is pretty words and prettier promises. She knows better. She knows that love is flesh and blood and bones. Love goes into the marrow of her and it is neither sweet, nor safe. It is not given, but taken, again and again.

Lucille should go to her. She should play her part for a few hours, a few days more. The window tempts her, though. Through the the grimy glass she can just make out the snowy landscape below. White, dotted with red. Like in that fairy tale, where the mother pricked her finger and wished for a child pale as snow, red as blood. She had liked that one, once. Before she learned that there was no escape into the forest for her.

It is so beautiful: her prison, her home. Rising above this wasteland like a ship cresting a wave. Proud and glorious and doomed. Some part of her knows that. Thomas still has hope, the poor dear. She has learned to live without, a long while ago. There had been none to be had, in that place where they put her after Mother died.

She remembers that day so clearly still.

  _It was a cold December, colder than either of them could remember it ever being before. Icicles formed on the balustrades, where snow fell in and then melted just enough with the meager heat they managed to scrounge up during the day. The house creaked and groaned like always, but there was a different, almost angry note to it._

_Thomas was crying. He did it often when he was scolded, and Mother scolded him for that, too, because boys were not supposed to. Lucille believed that she could have gotten away with it, but she never felt like crying. She would rather be angry. Angry at Mother for not loving her. Angry at the house for breaking down. Sometimes even angry at Thomas, because the crying really did get on her nerves, but she could not complain about it when Mother already did._

_She was supposed to be practicing her embroidery. But as there was hardly any cloth worth wasting thread on and no one inclined to check her progress, she did not think it mattered overly much. And besides, her fingers were too numb for any fine work these days. She could hear her brother's sobs from across the hall. They showed no sign of abating any time soon. It would be better for both of them if she went to him._

_So Lucille got up, shivering as she removed the shawl from her lap and replaced it on the back of the chair. The loss of any warmth was a terror in this house, the cold always ready to bite down on any newly exposed flesh with tiny gnawing teeth of ice. One did not get used to it, for some reason, like she thought the animals must, not to freeze to death in the cold. But maybe they did freeze. How could she know? She'd never seen a live wild animal bigger than a moth._

_She made her way down the hall to Thomas' door. She did not bother to knock, she was going in whether he wished it or not._

” _Thomas, darling, what did she say this time?”, she asked before she even got the door open. It would not do to make him fear that it was Mother again._

_Her brother was hunched under the covers, his back to the door, and shivering. It could have been from the crying, or from the cold, or perhaps both. Whatever the reason, the sight hurt her heart. He was hers and she had not, could not protect him. She tried, she always tried, but it was so often not enough. And some things she simply could not change at all._

_He did not answer, or even turn to look at her. So she sat down on the edge of his bed and reached down to stroke the tuft of dark hair that was just visible above his blanket. ”You should not mind Mother so, you know,” she said gently, while she ran her fingers through the silky strands. ”She would leave you be, if you just listened quietly and then went your own way. As I do.”_

_He still did not answer, but the shivering seemed to lessen, just a little. On impulse Lucille lifted the covers and crawled in beside him, like they had sometimes done when they were both much younger. The warmth almost hurt, it felt so good. His slim body next to her radiated heat and instinctively she moved even closer._

_Now he finally turned to face her and she gasped. There was an angry red welt across his left cheek, all the way down to the corner of his mouth. It looked obscene against his flesh, alien and hateful._

” _She should not have done that,” was all Lucille said, but she knew Thomas would understand._

” _It doesn't hurt so much, anymore,” Thomas tried to say, but could not hide how the movement pained him. Lucille shushed him: ”Never defend her. Never, never to me.”_

_She put her arms around him, cradling him like a child. She could feel the warmth of his breath against her breast, moist and sweet even through the layers of cloth. Hesitantly his arms came up to embrace her in turn, and for a while they just lay quietly like that._

_Lucille could feel the heat pooling in that part of her that she was supposed to pretend did not exist. An aching, anxious feeling, but not unpleasant exactly. She looked into her brother's eyes, suddenly unsure, and saw how his pupils had grown large, dark and desperate. For a moment he looked to her like some wild thing, capable of anything, not to be trusted. Then he blinked and was just Thomas again, confused and wanting and hers._

_She slid her hand between them, a slow but deliberate movement. She could feel him there, hard and surely aching, the way she was. He started to say something, ask a question perhaps, but she stopped him with her mouth._

_It was clumsy and awkward and a little painful. It was simple and natural and glorious. They fit together and when they did not, they made it work anyway. That was what they did, made the best of things. Because they had each other's backs, and always would._

Mother had found them like that, tangled in bed sheets and for once in their miserable lives actually happy. Lucille had not even tried to explain, there could be no excuse that anyone would believe, least of all Mother. It was lucky that the sight had upset her enough that she could not think of a suitable punishment straight away. Instead, she had ordered them to their rooms, still somehow believing that they would obey.

 Lucille had found her in the bath, the weight of the cleaver comforting, if strange, in her hand. It had been easy, so easy that she had wondered for a while why she had not done it sooner. But then everything had fallen apart, and she had understood why.

Oh, how Lucille had missed her brother when they took her away. It was like the marrow from her bones had been removed, a hollowness inside her that hurt so much that she could only scream. As soon as she was able to think again, she understood that the doctors could keep her there forever, if they liked, so she learned to bite down on the screams and be meek. It was the only way out. But she can still taste the blood in her mouth.

Now, in bed, when she holds him down and makes him beg and plead, she wonders at how different he must be to those women who think he is theirs. He plays his role so well, they never seem to realize they can never touch him, inside or out, the way that she does. All their interactions, from beginning to the inevitable end, must be so forced on his part. Thomas has to be the master to them and they seem to believe every bit. But Lucille knows better. In here, in their bed, he can be himself. Her brother, her precious child, to be kept safe from all harm.

  



End file.
